The “official”-looking RMIT Exertion Games Lab site is now live, linking nicely here: http://www.rmit.edu.au/exertiongameslab
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Wouter Walmink will talk about his company Studio Ludens and Eberhard Graether about the Marble Run, the in-browser game that won the Mozilla Game On Challenge.
Date: Tuesday 6th September
Time: 12.30
Venue: 14.11.37
Wouter Walmink (walmink.com) just joined the Exertion Games Lab
(exertiongameslab.org) at RMIT, coming from the Netherlands; he has
previously worked at CSIRO in Canberra. He is an award-winning
interaction designer who creates design tools that help you “make
beautiful things”. He helps designers to work together with their users
in creating customized products (without ever meeting in person) and
allowing the general public to experience the joy of creating
firsthand. Wouter’s talk will focus on 2 points:
1. What have I learnt from 5 years of designing for creative
experiences? (examples & findings)
2. How can you make better games / interfaces that use creativity for a
general public? (linking it to the field of gaming)
Eberhard Gräther is student of MultiMediaTechnology at Salzburg
University of Applied Sciences. He is a visiting researcher at RMIT’s Exertion Games Lab.
Eberhard will talk about his study and his projects including Marble
Run, the in-browser game that won the Mozilla Game On Challenge.
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Flora Salim from the Spatial Information Architecture Lab at RMIT will talk on Tuesday 30 Aug 2011 at 12.30 in 14.11.37. Talk abstract:
Coding, hacking, and prototyping are fun, as well as playing, interacting, and social gaming! Can we insert the “fun” from gaming experiences into collaborative design projects solving real-world problems? Dr. Flora Salim (http://florasalim.com), a Research Fellow at Spatial Information Architecture Laboratory (SIAL), RMIT University, is interested in enabling transdisciplinary design teams to work collaboratively to produce exciting outcomes. With background in Computer Science, she is interested in applying computational approaches, particularly distributed and mobile computing, data analysis, augmented reality, and tangible interactions to architecture and urban design problems. She initiated the development of UbiMash (http://ubimash.com), an open source software platform for designing between physical and digital, enabling data exchange between physical and digital models using game consoles, microelectronics, sensor devices, social networks, and the Web.
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Hugh Davies will be in the lab from Monday onwards working on his PhD on the alternate reality game The Darkest Puzzle. Hugh has produced alternate games for the ABC and has extensive international experience in the games research arena from Europe as well. Welcome Hugh!
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Wouter Walmink is an amazing designer who has done fascinating exertion systems and games in both Australia (CSIRO) and in the Netherlands, where he co-founded Studio Ludens that attracted prestigious clients such as Philips and TUE. He will be joining the Exertion Games Lab on Monday, working on a distributed exertion game for teenagers. Welcome Wouter!
A word from Wouter
Hi there!
I am super-excited to be part of the Exertion Games Lab as of today (29-8-2011). A quick introduction: I’m an interaction designer with a passion for physical interaction. I love empowering people and helping them discover their own talents. In the past 5 years I have been running my own company studio:ludens with Alexander Rulkens, developing online design tools and products in the emerging market of mass-customization. Last year we created an interactive installation called ‘Flosculus’ with Philips and Little Mountain (watch the video).
Among others we developed a pattern-making tool called Repper. An early online version of this tool generated over 100.000 patterns made by people all over the world, browsable at ColourPatterns.com. Have a go at it yourself with the latest version in the online demo.
In the next months my aim is to develop an exertion game that will knock your socks off. I’ll try and merge new interaction styles into exercise gameplay, mingle new themes with old-school fun and make magic happen.
This project is all about making something amazing —> more brains involved = more amazingness. So if you’re in for a brainstorm session, want to share your wisdom with me or join in, contact me at wouter@walmink.com.
See you at the Exertion Games Lab!
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Florian ‘Floyd’ Mueller’s talk at Freeplay 2011 was audio-recorded and is now online at:
http://soundcloud.com/christydena/freeplay2011-floydmueller (including the introduction by Christy Dena).
Christy Dena’s blogpost about the topic is at: http://www.christydena.com/2011/08/avoiding-crap-game-design-panel-audio/
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Florian ‘Floyd’ Mueller will speak as part of a panel at Freeplay on “How Every Little Decision Can Bring You Closer To or Further Away from Creating Art” and chair a session on “The big and the small stage” both on 20 Aug 2011.
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Florian ‘Floyd’ Mueller will be talking about Exertion Games and give a demo of Hanging off a Bar on Tuesday, 16 Aug 2011, 12.30-1.30pm in the new Exertion Games Lab at RMIT’s 9.1.27. Everyone welcome.
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Today we showed Hanging off a Bar at RMIT’s Open Day 2011, lots of people learned about game design while exercising with our game! Everyone enjoyed the experience, which was very pleasing!
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Last night we created a new and improved version of “Hanging off a Bar” in a 1-night hackathon. The goal of the game is to “hang on” as long as you can, not letting go and falling into the virtual river below you. There are some rafts coming by from time to time, on which you can jump to rest, but you have to be quick, as they keep moving and you have to jump back up onto the bar. Winner is who can hang on the longest. We will show this game at the Open Day and use it afterwards to explore the relationship between exertion investment and particular game elements.
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Florian ‘Floyd’ Mueller from the Exertion Games Lab was invited to jury the Demo Hour in the Interactions magazine for the current issue.
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Thanks for contributing to today’s brainstorming session for the peace.facebook initiative, it was great fun!
Attached is a picture of the board where we posted all ideas. They will now be summarized and put forward to the peace.facebook initiative and then we’ll turn them into some great student projects.
Thanks again for participating, very inspiring!
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In the User Experience in Games lecture organized by the Exertion Games Lab, students were challenged to redesign the hand-dryer experience in a playful way. They came up with some amazing ideas on how to turn a task-focused activity (how can we dry hands faster and more effectively?) into an engaging play experience, see the pictures.
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Eberhard Graether, a very talented multimedia student from Austria specializing in games in augmented reality, will join the Exertion Games Lab later this year. We are very excited to have him on board.
His great portfolio is at http://egraether.com/ and his twitter id is @egraether.
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We are having a brainstorming meeting on Fri, 5th Aug, 3-4pm in 14.11.04 to think about a mobile exertion game that we can bring to the table for peace.facebook.com. If interested, get in contact with Floyd.
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Interested in getting writing done? Every morning, 9-10, Mo-Fr, the Exertion Games Lab offers the Writing Club, where you are invited to join others to “just write”, whether it be an academic paper, grant application etc., motivated simply by fellow writing-sufferer’s presence and the feeling of not writing alone. Writing Club – the next best thing after Fight Club.
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The Exertion Game Lab is seeking students from RMIT who are interested in designing a mobile exertion game for the peace.facebook.com initiative from the Persuasive Technology Lab initiative at Stanford. If interested, get in contact with Floyd.
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